by Barry Eisler
“Hell yes, it is. Can’t you sense it about me?”
“In fact, I think I can, even apart from the recommendation from our mutual friend. Though I’m afraid to count on it.”
“Well, it would be foolish to just count on it. But luckily there are signs, even beyond that sterling recommendation. For example, have you noticed I haven’t asked you a single question about where you live, or where you go, or when you go there? Nothing that would enable me to fix you in time and place.”
“That’s true.”
“And I haven’t asked for a cell-phone number, either. Here, do you know what this is?” He pulled out the shielded phone case.
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“It’s called a Faraday bag. It blocks everything—Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, RFID, radio, and every kind of cell-phone signal. You turn off your phone, close it up inside, and no one can track you. You can get one in any electronics store. Or better yet, just lose your cell phone entirely. It’s less convenient than having one, but it beats dying. I learned that from a friend of mine. Very smart man who’s lived longer than most in a dangerous business in part because he eschews convenience in favor of security.”
“What if you need to reach me?”
It was good the man was raising practical concerns. It showed he was listening. And it was encouraging that he seemed to be acknowledging, or at least contemplating, some kind of partnership here.
“If I need to contact you, I’ll call you here at the office. If somebody comes out of the woodwork and says, ‘Oh, I have important information for you, meet me at such and such a time and such and such a place,’ or ‘Give me your mobile number and I’ll call you,’ that person is not a friend, you understand? And you should vary your routes and times, too—when you come and go from work and where you live, and what time you do it, I mean. You need to watch your back until this thing is over.”
“And when will that be?”
“I haven’t figured all that out yet. But speaking of which, regarding the kind of information I’m not asking you about yourself, and that in fact I’m advising you not to share with anyone else, either—well, if you have any such information about Mr. Sorm, I’d be curious to hear it.”
“And what would you do with such information?”
“Use it to protect you.”
“How?”
“Look, Mr. Vann, we’re from different worlds. But we both want the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“Sorm neutralized, I’d say.”
“I can’t be part of something like that.”
“I’m not asking you to be part of anything. I just want to know where to find him. And I won’t lie to you, I’m not being entirely altruistic here. I think his people are after me now, too.”
“I am genuinely sorry to hear that.”
“I won’t deny, it’s been a bit distressing for me, too.”
“But I don’t know where he is. Up until a week ago, we had people watching him in Pailin Province here in Cambodia. But then we lost track. And he hasn’t reappeared, not even in the usual places.”
“What do you think is going on? He got wind of your investigation?”
“This is what I’m beginning to think. So many people seem to know of it—even you.”
“I heard about it from Gant. Though I don’t suppose that should count as a comfort.”
“You already know a great deal, it seems, and Kanezaki said I should trust you. So I will tell you this: recently, a grand jury voted to indict Sorm in New York. The indictment is sealed. That is, secret.”
“But Sorm got wind of it somehow.”
Vann nodded, that sadness in his eyes. “I’ve worked for so many years to bring this man to justice. It seems he’s finally won.”
“What do you mean? What about your indictment?”
“The indictment is worthless if Sorm can’t be brought to trial. I won’t be the head of GIFT forever. And when I’m replaced, there will be a new head. With new priorities. Perhaps someone more amenable to the sorts of . . . inducements Sorm and his benefactors wield against justice.”
“Maybe I can find him for you. So you could bring him in.” He said it without really considering. Because he had no interest in just finding Sorm. The point was also to fix and finish him.
Vann shook his head sadly. “He has so many protectors. Even on the grand jury, there were jurors who were being pressured to vote not to indict. Ironically, this was something Gant claimed he could help with.”
“Well, Gant’s not protecting him anymore, if I may be permitted a moment of characteristic immodesty.”
“Yes, but who is behind Gant? He told me only that he was part of US intelligence.”
“Now you’re asking the right questions. Kanezaki might be able to help with that.” He didn’t want to let on that Kanezaki could definitely help. He’d leave that to Kanezaki.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Come on, don’t look so glum. It might be the fourth quarter, but the game’s not over yet. You told me yourself, Sorm’s movements just now are unusual. You’re talking about him like he’s got it all dialed in, but it sounds to me like you’ve got him spooked and on the run. When people run, they have to break with the familiar. They make mistakes and they get spotted.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, let’s put our heads together. A little while ago, you mentioned his usual haunts.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got eyes and ears in these places, but nobody’s seen him?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay. You’ve been tracking this guy for years. I doubt there’s anyone who knows him the way you do. Put yourself in his shoes. Where do you go if the usual places are too hot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you stay in Cambodia?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
There was a pause while Vann considered. Then he said, “His most extensive protection, maybe even more extensive than here in Cambodia, is in Thailand.”
“Are there any usual places in Thailand?”
“He has an interest in various establishments in Bangkok. And Phuket.”
“But you’ve said he hasn’t been spotted there. That you’re pretty sure he’s somewhere else. Where would that be?”
Vann nodded slowly. “I have an idea. But . . . I can’t share it with you. I can’t countenance what you would do with it. I’ll go through the usual channels.”
“You just got done telling me that somebody in your usual channels warned Sorm about this grand-jury indictment, which is the very reason he’s now in the wind.”
Vann didn’t answer.
“Plus,” he went on, “I told you, in addition to everything else, this guy is a danger to you.”
“I want him to face justice,” Vann said. “But my justice. Not yours.”
“For a guy like Sorm, I’d say justice is justice.”
“No. He is a terrible man. But still, a man. A person. My own judgment of him is not an excuse to go around the law. To subvert the proper order of things.”
Dox had his own well-settled views about what constituted “the proper order of things.” But damn it, the look on the man’s face was so earnest it was practically irresistible.
“I’ll try to find him,” Dox said. “But I can’t promise—”
“But you see, that is precisely what I need. I need you to promise. Or I won’t tell you where I think he can be found.”
Dox would have thought the man drove a hard bargain, but the truth was there was nothing hard about him. He was determined, obviously, but more than anything else, what came through in his eyes and expression was that damn compassion.
Maybe he really was the Dalai Lama, albeit with more hair. Because there was a power about him, a gentle power that made Dox feel almost . . . ashamed.
“All right,” he said. “I promise if I find him, I won’t give him my justice. I’ll give h
im yours. I’ll find a way to bring him in.”
Vann looked deeply into Dox’s eyes. It felt like the man was seeing into his soul.
“I hope this won’t come out the wrong way,” Vann said. “But . . . I’m proud of you. I was right about you being a good man.”
Dox felt himself blush with confusion and embarrassment. “Well, let’s not go too far here. I’m going to regret the hell out of that promise if Sorm winds up slipping away as a result. Or worse, killing you. Not to mention me.”
“In the scope of the universe, and the arc of justice, my life is of little consequence.”
“I don’t know if I can agree with that.”
Vann smiled. “Nor should you. It’s something a person should only conclude about himself. All other lives are precious.”
Dox shook his head in reluctant admiration. “When this is over, sir, I’d fancy a long conversation with you, maybe over a beer if that’s your thing. You seem to have an interesting and admirable philosophy. But for now, I have a job to do, and I need your information to do it.”
Vann put his hands together in a sampeah. “I would very much enjoy that conversation. As for my information, in talking with you just now about the usual places, the expected places . . . well, now that I’m about to tell you, I almost feel silly. Because I realize it’s really just a hunch.”
“No, no, believe me, I learned something valuable from someone just recently that started with nothing but a hunch. Don’t think about it. Just say it.”
“All right. About six months ago, a consortium of developers built a five-star hotel in Pattaya called Ruby, with a massive nightclub called Les Nuits. This is part of an ongoing effort to re-rebrand Pattaya—first there was sleaze, then there was the attempt to brand the area as something for a ‘wholesome family vacation,’ and now there’s an attempt to combine the two with upscale clubs like Les Nuits.”
Pattaya was a beach town about a two-hour drive southeast of Bangkok, known for its profusion of beer bars and go-go clubs, and though he hadn’t been there in years, Dox had gotten to know it well enough back in the day. “Sure,” he said, “a little like the evolution of Las Vegas.”
“Yes, the American sin city is in fact a model for the Pattaya town fathers. At any rate, there were some indications at the time that one of Sorm’s front companies had invested in the project, as a money-laundering scheme, but we were never able to uncover anything concrete. And I decided that our information was faulty, because Sorm’s practice was to invest in smaller, lower-profile, and more . . . déclassé establishments, and mostly in Bangkok and Phuket. But now . . .”
“Now?”
“Now I’m wondering. If Sorm is in hiding, Ruby would be the kind of place I wouldn’t expect. Certainly we made no mention of it in the indictment. He would have protection there—probably a lot of it. It would be comfortable. It would be . . . well, as I said, it’s just a hunch. I doubt there’s anything that could be done with it.”
“Hell, Mr. Vann, I know low people in high places and high people in low places. You’d be surprised what I can do with a hunch like yours.”
9
Three mornings after her conversation with Lieutenant Strangeland, Livia was in a cab en route to Saint Clare Hospice northeast of Bangkok, part of the Franciscan Foundation of Thailand, a haven for indigents gripped by the final ravages of AIDS. One of whom, it seemed, was Square Head.
Her decision to approach Square Head first was based on the simple fact that the Homeland Security database didn’t list a mobile-phone number for Dirty Beard. But Square Head’s mobile was known. And Livia still had the Gossamer cell-phone tracker she had permanently borrowed from SPD inventory. She had checked out one of the units, then returned the machine-press-crushed remains of a replica, claiming to have dropped it on the tracks at a Seattle Link Light Rail station just as a train was pulling in. The department had six of them, purchased with a grant from Homeland Security, as it happened, the formidable units all tightly controlled pursuant to a contract with the manufacturer. Alvin, the head of police inventory, had a crush on her and was happy to fill out the paperwork explaining the accident and requisitioning a replacement.
Which meant Livia had her own handheld cell-phone tracker, sensitive enough to place a phone to within a yard of its actual location and to listen in on calls. She had used it to track Senator Lone to his hotel room in Bangkok. And as soon as she’d checked in to a business hotel in Sathorn after arriving from Seattle, she had used it to locate Square Head. The thought of him slowly eaten alive by disease was enormously pleasing. Because he deserved it, of course. But also because, with just a little luck, it would make him more vulnerable. If she couldn’t manipulate him, she didn’t know how she would get to Dirty Beard. Or Sorm.
Or find that little girl.
Once they were clear of metropolitan Bangkok, the landscape changed dramatically, the cluttered canyons of concrete, the congestion of untold thousands of cars and tuk-tuks and motorcycles, the metastasized tangles of electric wires, all suddenly leveling off almost with a sigh, replaced by a far-reaching flat landscape of green rice paddies and a vast pale-blue sky. The windows of the cab were open, and for the second time in as many months, the smell of the air, the colors of the earth and sky . . . it all stirred powerful feelings of her childhood. Nostalgia. Sadness. Grief. Regret. She had spent her adulthood convinced the girl she had been was gone, the child cut off, the amputation site cauterized. It seemed this country insisted on proving her wrong.
About an hour outside Bangkok, they came to a modest road sign, so small as to be deliberately humble, with a message in Thai and English saying Garden of Gospel Peace: Franciscan Friars 4 km. The anxiety Livia had been keeping at the periphery pushed in harder, and she felt her heart begin to kick from an adrenaline hit. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply, the way she had learned to do before judo matches, the way she always did while hunting a rapist. This time, though, it barely helped. She was about to face a monster from her childhood. And everything else she needed to accomplish depended on success with him.
They turned off the two-lane blacktop and followed an older, rutted road, bleached gray by the sun. Other than two cars and a single motor scooter, they passed nothing but grass and swaying palm trees. It was a bucolic setting, detached, dreamy, and peaceful, and it was easy to see why the Franciscans would have chosen it. But the incongruity between the ambiance and what Livia was here for made her anxiety worse.
Come on, girl. It’s a good plan. You’ve done this before. You’ve always made it work. Just breathe. Breathe.
After a few minutes along the rutted road, they came to another sign, again in Thai and English: Friary, Retreat House, St. Clare Hospice. Arrows indicated that the friary was one way, the retreat house and hospice the other.
The cab followed the sign to the retreat house. They passed a sala, the small Thai pavilion, under which stood a life-sized statue of Saint Francis, one hand open in welcome, the other holding a dove. Beyond it was a simple white building with a red-tiled roof. A sign read Retreat House.
She paid the driver, shouldered her backpack, discreetly used a bandana to pull the door handle, and got out of the cab, her damp shirt clinging to her back. She waited under the portico of the building for a minute, watching the cab head off, getting into character. She was a backpacker, visiting Thailand from San Francisco. In reality she was thirty-one, but she could pass for considerably younger, and right now, in her cargo shorts, tee shirt, light hiking boots, and boonie hat, she knew she looked like someone recently out of grad school, traveling on the cheap for a while before figuring out her next move. The clothes and backpack were all new, purchased in Bangkok just the day before, in fact, but she’d been sure to scuff the shoes and rub dirt into the pack and otherwise give everything a lived-in look that would pass anything less than a careful inspection. And the nonprescription horn-rimmed glasses she had on did a lot to alter her appearance generally.
When
the cab had disappeared around a bend in the road and she felt like who she was supposed to be, she walked inside, finding a long room stretching left and right, empty but for dozens of chairs lining the walls. There was nothing remotely fancy about the facility, but it was clean and looked well cared for. In contrast to the heat and glare outside, the air was pleasantly cool and dry, the walls and floor illuminated only by rays of light coming softly through the windows. A ceiling fan spun lazily overhead. The space felt like a sanctuary.
A young Thai man in a brown habit was sitting behind a plain wooden desk facing the entrance. He stood when he saw her, pressed his palms together in a wai, and said in Thai-accented English, “Welcome to the Garden of Gospel Peace.”
Livia used a heel to close the door, then returned the wai and approached the desk, her footfalls echoing off the tile floor. “My name is Andrea,” she said. “Andrea Brown. I made a reservation online . . . ?”
“Oh, yes, Ms. Brown. I am Brother Panit. I have your reservation right here. For two nights, one person, one of the small rooms with air-conditioning, is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Half the payment is due upon check-in, the other half one day before checkout—so tomorrow.”
“Of course. Why don’t I just pay it all right now?” She was carrying thousands of dollars worth of greenbacks and baht. She expected there was a lot she would have to buy during the week and wanted to be able to do so anonymously. Now she took fifteen hundred baht from one of the pockets in her shorts and placed it on the desk. About twenty-two dollars a night. A bargain, for an opportunity to indulge in a little solitude and quiet contemplation.
Or to interrogate and kill one of the men who raped you and your sister when you were children.
“Thank you, Ms. Andrea,” the man said, placing the baht in one of the desk drawers. It was a small thing, but still bewildering—in a good way—to be a Seattle cop suddenly in a world where without a second thought people left cash in unsecured drawers.
Brother Panit escorted her across a pedestrian bridge spanning a fishpond, through a garden filled with chirping birds, and along a stone path to a small, solitary bungalow. The door was unlocked, and Livia was careful to touch nothing as they went inside, just as she had been at the reception center. The space was Spartan: plaster walls, two single cots, a writing desk, a plain wooden chair. The bathroom was just big enough to contain a stall shower and a toilet. Brother Panit closed the door behind them, and suddenly the world was noiseless, even the buzzing of insects gone.
